This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the immersion circulator for Sous V by Chef Steps. Order now at chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from pretty late this time, but actually we're only doing a half hour show, I think this time, but eh, from roughly 12 to you know roughly 1245, like uh, you know, 1255. Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Nastasia? Yeah, we got Dave in the booth. How are you doing, Dave? I'm good.
How are you doing? Doing alright. Um, oh, we just got some birch syrup in from Zan. It says, hey cooking issues, greetings from Alaska. Here is some birch syrup from my hometown.
Enjoy. And then uh, I guess they're from Homer because it says Homer Couple Taps tree, so I assume that's Homer Alaska, yeah? Yeah. Now, the only birch syrup I've ever had before was, and I think I mentioned this on the air, which is maybe why uh Zan sent it to us. The only birch syrup I've had before was flawed.
And uh by flawed I mean like extremely acidic, as though something either the sap was extremely high acid or something had grown in it, and I didn't know whether that's just the way what you hear crinkling in the background is not mouth noises. Please don't be afraid, cooking issues, people. It's Nastasia unwrapping the uh birch syrup. It's wrapped in bubble wrap and aluminum foil to prevent the alien rays from getting to it. One thing I have to say, Zan, it takes a lot of uh guts to wrap stuff in aluminum foil because you never know.
Some lunatic might be like, I can't see through it with my machine, so I'm gonna open it up. You know what I mean? Yeah. Did I ever tell you about the time I ordered that espresso machine, and they didn't drain the boiler? And they'd originally packed it okay, but then when they shipped it to me, a little water had dripped out.
So UPS completely unpacked it, and when they packed it, they were like, ah, it's wet. And they threw the entire thing back in the box without the packing, and then rattled it around over and over and over again. And when they showed it up, every single panel was shattered and broken. I got that espresso machine basically for free. And I'm still using it to this day.
Ooh, this looks nice. Um take a little taste here. Mmm, that's good. It is actually tart, but this one is not flawed. So birch syrup must be inherently tartar than what's it called?
Maple. But I think this is delicious. This is a much superior product to the uh one that I that I tried before. You gotta dip your finger in that? It's pure syrup, Stas.
She's drinking. I'm not gonna go there. I know. I'm not gonna go there. So what do you think?
Tart. What do you think though? It tastes good. I like it. I think it's delicious.
And it looks to be about, I have to test it, it looks to be about 66 bricks. And the company, for those of you that are uh keeping track of such things, is Bridge Creek uh birch syrup. Uh 100% pure birch syrup made in Homer, Alaska. Well, thanks so much. Uh always love doing a uh uh taste uh test.
Uh tomorrow I fly out to Portland to have some truffles, so more on that next week when I'm back. Uh anything good going on, Nastasia? No. Nothing good. Have we talked about the house guest Olympics?
No. All right. This is something I think that uh now, this is something that Jen and I did back when we were in our early 20s. Uh, but I think it's just as valid now. And I meant to talk to Nastasi about this, it's just super valid for you, uh, especially for Nastasia because she has so many poor house guests.
But uh Jen and I used to we always wonder when people come over, like who raised you? You know what I mean? Like, where did you come from? Like, how did you show up at my house completely empty-handed, make a huge mess, and then just hightail it out and like leave me with all this garbage, right? Like, how did that happen?
Right? Uh Dave, you have this problem? Do you invite people over to your house? Yeah, but uh I've never really been stiffed like that. Not that I can recall.
No, you have good uh house. So here's what you here's what you do. There's there's dinner, but there's also people who come and stay at stay at your place. And so what we did is we started kind of the house guest Olympics, and we would rank people when they came over. And we didn't tell people that we were ranking them, maybe a little bit we did, but it's like we were like ranking people, and we really got a sense for kind of who people were with this kind of a house guest Olympics.
Like the the person who clearly wins the house guest Olympics is my cousin Nathan, who whenever he shows up, Nathan, yeah, he shows up with stuff. The guy doesn't like dessert, so like at the end of dinner when everyone's eating dessert, he's in the in the dish like area cleaning all of the dishes, and so he shows up, brings you stuff, has good conversation, doesn't talk about stuff that pisses everybody off, like is we'll talk. You know how when you have that one person not like cooking issues. Not like cooking issues. You know how that one person, there's always that one person that you invite who doesn't say anything, and you're like, oh my god, who's gonna talk to that one person doesn't say anything?
You know who that guy is? Nathan! Nathan's that guy that will go talk to that person at your house and not make it awkward that there's that person in the corner that's just basically, you know, capillary action sucking all of your wine even out of the bottles. You don't even know where it's going, but they're in the corner, like sucking up all the wine and not saying anything to anyone. Nathan's the guy that'll talk to them and clean your dishes.
So that is like, that's like gold medal, like 10.0 floor routine, like house guest Olympics. But I recommend to all you people out there that you start keeping track of the house guest Olympics, and then if you let people know, maybe people get better. Maybe good people get better. Doesn't that sound nice and sassy? You should rate all your friends.
Would they all fail? No. No, they're not as bad as you as you think. If they're not as bad as I think, that means they're not as bad as you tell me. Yeah, but no, but it's like Nastasia he says something, they're not as bad as you think.
The only thing I know about them is what Nastasia tells me. They were bad eight years ago. Uh-huh. So you're saying they've graduated? No offense to the Yellowtail Corporation, but they're they they've graduated beyond.
Yes. Yes. They're they no longer come over to your house and say, I'm not bringing any wine because uh I'm not drinking today, and then they drink wine anyway. That hasn't happened in a while. Many years.
Like two weeks? No. All right. Anyway. House guests Olympics.
So uh we have uh some questions in. Um Vincent wrote in from uh Michigan regarding salting. We didn't deal with any the only thing we dealt with was rabbits, right? Yeah. Right.
Right. Okay. Uh I only recently found out about cooking issues and been listening through the back catalog. I'm only at episode 120, but everything's been good. Uh by the way, what episode are we on now?
I have no idea. Dave, what episode is this? Uh let me check the archives one sec. Yeah. No.
Uh first I would like to thank you uh for opening my eyes to the a wonder that is the music of Daryl Hall and John Oates. That's straight out to you, Nastasia. Although you went to go see them in concert. Bad. Well, bad for what reason?
Were they f actually bad, or you just they disappointed you because he kept on trying to be younger and hitting on the women? And uh, what's it called? Jamming. Oh, you hate jamming? Yeah.
You hate all forms of jam? No, I mean they're not a jam band. As far as you know, is that the first time you ever saw them live? Yeah. Well, how do you know that they're not a jam band?
Well, don't jam bands like if a jam band's a jam band, it's played like that on the radio, right? No, I mean they don't use jam bands don't usually get played on the radio. Well, like the Allman Brothers. Wait, is the question whether Hall of Notes is a jam band? The H the question is why would you assume that Hall I mean, I would assume that they're not, because they're like 80s, just like you know, 80s.
Like I assume that they only come out of like boombox stereo speakers. That's what I assume that they come out of. But I mean, like, no, I mean, like people uh what you hear from the Allman Brothers is like rambling man. That song's only two minutes and thirty five seconds. Grateful Dead is not played on the radio.
Yes, it is. What radio plays the Grateful Dead? They didn't when I was a kid. Yeah, they play them. Like what?
They play like the shorter songs, like like Touch of Grey or No, A Touch of Grey was like their lead yeah, that's the least Grateful Dead song on Earth, Touch of Grey. That was like after like they had already done anything they were gonna do. You ever hear like you never hear like Casey Jones on the radio, do you? What radio? Not when I was growing up.
I did back when I was younger. Not now. Right. No offense, radio people. But the point is that when I was growing up.
What's wrong with radio? When I was growing up, nothing. When I was growing up, when like when the Grateful Dead was actually playing, you know what I mean? And not just like doing like, you know, reunions when they're all like half of them are dead back when they were actually a band and no one had died yet miraculously. That stuff was not on the radio at all.
You know what I mean? But anyway, I don't know. Do they play fish on the radio? Not that I know of. Not the stations I listen to.
Dave Matthews? Yes. That they play him. That's a jam band. Right, but do they play long, like 20 minute songs on the radio?
20 minutes songs. No, I don't think anybody plays 20 minute songs radio. 10 minute on the radio. Yes. On regular radio.
Yes. On radio that these people out here eating pizza would would uh listen to. I don't think hipsters listen to AMFM radio. They should. They should oh it's they should listen to AM only, but only in mono.
This is taking a weird turn. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Vincent was.
What was the actual question? Oh no, he just mentioned Hollow Notes, and so we're talking about music and Hall Notes. By the way. Oh, we've only gone through the preamble of the glitch. Little story, yeah.
Little story. Uh Nastasia Lopez, this is a classic Nastasia, by the way, uh, once bought tickets to see Billy Joel at one of his Madison Square Garden performances. And as anyone who knows us personally knows both fans of Billy Joel. We like Billy Joel. You know, I grew up close enough to Long Island.
Uh I don't know where Nastasia got her love of Billy Joel, but like, you know, I like I love myself and Billy Joel. Nastasia buys herself tickets, Dave. You'll like this. Ticket to go alone. So Nastasia buys a ticket, and then that's so adorable.
Then we're at an event together, literally working an event. And by the way, it was a garbage event. I don't even remember what it was. And uh she goes, Oh my god, I'm supposed to be at Billy Joel. I just missed the Billy Joel concert.
First of all, I didn't need her to be at the event. She could have gone to the Billy Joel concert. She knows it. She doesn't blame me for this. She has forgot she had the concert.
But here's the kicker, Dave. This is this is pure Nastasia Lopez. Nastasia will never buy again a Billy Joel ticket, even though she desperately wants to go, but she's gonna punish herself because no, I already bought that ticket and I didn't get to see it. So now she's never gonna allow herself to see Billy Joel again. Even and this what reminds me is Billy Joel, uh a friend of mine, Luci, you know, Lucia Inguido, went to go see him last week at the garden.
Said it said he did some jams, but said he was great, still good. So maybe someday, maybe someday I'll just I'll buy you a ticket, or maybe some like cooking issues admirer will send you a Billy Joel ticket to the Yeah, I don't want anybody to pay for it. But Nastasi, the only way you get to go see Billy Joel in concert is a ticket or the hell has an extra ticket? Lots of people. Whatever, whatever.
I don't again, I don't know how we got it. Oh, another thing. Did you know that Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus is closing? Do you know that nobody cares but me? Nobody cares about me.
Are she gonna go? I don't think so. I might go to there's it's at Barclay Center in like February and March. I need to find someone who cares to go with me. When's the last time you went to the circus?
That's one of those things that you just forget even exists anymore. When now I guess it doesn't. When Booker was very small, uh, I took him. But I used to I've I used my grandparents lived in uh right up near Sarasota, so they took me to see them during the uh during their practice when they weren't on the road because that's where both troops would train. Like they used, you know, they were like uh a railroad only show for a long time.
So in New York, they used to uh march all of their animals from the railroad depot in Brooklyn or Queens maybe through the um uh midtown tunnel, and then they would walk from the midtown tunnel over to the garden where where it was uh where it was going on, and so you could go in the middle of the night and watch the entire circus parade all of the animals through the tunnel and out. It was nutty, like miniature horses. Good business. Anyway, and end of an era. Uh we should get to the question running out of time.
Okay. So here are the questions they have. I read this article, and it's it's from Food and Wine, uh written by uh Oliver Schwanner Albright uh years ago, like four or five years ago. Where the authors uh you can find it on the uh on the internet. It's called The Juicy Secret to Seasoning Meat, where the author's experiment resulted in the conclusion that different meats or cooking methods require different timings for salting the meat for best results.
Does this match your experience and knowledge? Is there any sort of best practice guideline for which kinds of meat or which cooking method should have salt applied at certain times? Um and then second question was I had once read that uh Dongpo uh pork belly where the I once had uh Red Cooked Dunkpo pork belly where the it was fat was so soft and tender that had almost the texture of creme caramel. How can I achieve this? Uh keep up the good word cooking issues tea.
All right, so uh let's go in reverse order. For the pork belly, it's been a long time since I've made that, but uh, if it's not soft, I think you have two things. Most people who do it, right, they do like a lot of kind of scraping of the skin beforehand, and some people will even uh needle it, and this lets like some stuff um kind of come out of it, and then they do your initial, typically a blanch step, um, and then after the blanch step, then comes the first, which is kind of a braised slash steam over a bed of like scallions and ginger with the uh rock sugar and the red and the uh the dark and the light soy sauce, right? Um and then after that, uh so the crappy recipes, which probably aren't as good, just do that until the kind of the meat is done. The good recipes then take it out of that, put it in an individual steamer, and then steam the bee Jesus out of it with some of the juice, but so that it's no longer evaporating anymore.
And they do that until fundamentally the fat is totally kind of broken down. And uh, you know, everyone has their own recipe, whether they do it skin side up or skin side down. Most people I know uh do it skin side down, then flip it skin side up, although I saw a place that did it that flipped it three times, right? So I think a lot of it just has to do with that secondary steam step. I don't know how important the initial uh scraping or needling of it is.
Uh but it's a good product. You like do you like pork belly when the skin is not crunchy, Stas, or do you only like it when skin's crunchy? When it's crunchy. Unless it's like in a in a steamed bun or something like this. But you don't like just the big chunk of red pork?
I do. I love that stuff. Dave, you you like you like the gooey pork belly fat, or do you like it only when that's the skin's been crispified? Yeah, I guess to paraphrase Hollow Notes, I could go for that. You could go for that?
Yeah, why not? No kid well, they said no can do. That's why I said paraphrase. Well, it's more like antiphrase. Nastasia's more paraphrasing.
She's like no can do. There was a steel drum player playing that song on the 59th sheet. Oh hate steel drums. Yeah, I didn't know. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Why do you hate steel drums? Is it because you hate uh Caribbean people? Or like that's that's quite a leap, but no. Why do you hate steel drums? Uh I don't know.
They just annoy me. Yep. What about when they have two different steel drums and they can play two different notes at once? Don't care. What about the fact that they make their own instruments?
That's pretty baller. I guess that's cool. I tried to make one once when I was a kid. Do you know what I was? Unsuccessful?
Like I was able to cut yourself. Uh no did I cut myself. I don't remember. I was very young, although I remember this. If you people, if you're gonna try to make your own steel drum, the most important thing is you have to be able to take the 55 gallon drum and then like kind of depress it out, right?
And that's kind of what I didn't do. I didn't have enough heat to really be able to bend that whole kind of drum thing out. But I spent the whole dang day doing it. And uh I just remember being really disappointed because as like, you know, an eleven year old, I was like, Man, steel drums are cool. But apparently you guys were like, Steel drums are for jerks and not cool, man.
Not cool. I don't know. Uh what is the I don't know what the cooking issues crowd thinks of the steel drums. Chat room, any thoughts? I don't know.
So to go back to uh the question of salting. Salting is both uh much easier and much more complicated than uh you'd think. Salting does a number of things. Uh salting obviously makes things uh taste better, right? So like so salt in general is good.
When you're talking about salting meats before or uh after or during, what you really wanna do is focus on what you're attempting to do with with the meat. So uh a very long of salting like a long time before where the salt actually gets to penetrate into the interior of the meat, right? For a meat that's going to be overcooked anyway. When I say overcooked, I mean cooked above uh rare or medium rare. Then in general, the salt is going to um allow the meat to hold on to more water, right?
So you're not only gonna season it, but you're gonna allow the meat to hold on to more water, it has more water absorption. However, uh it also has a um kind of firmer texture once it's been salted than it would otherwise. And this is due to a number of reasons. One, and it I I don't think it's primarily dehydration, I think it's primarily because you're um solubilizing some proteins that come out and form a gel uh with it, so it kind of firms up. So salting firms the meat.
And you can think about this very clearly if you think about when you salt a fish and you let it sit for a long time, the flesh gets a good bit firmer. The same thing happens when you're doing uh pork or a steak or or something like this. And so when I'm going to uh eat something that is rare or medium rare, uh, and I'm going to let it sit for a long time, right? Then I don't want to salt it more than about an hour or two before it's going to get eaten because I don't want the interior of that meat to firm up on me. Uh this is specifically with kind of low temperature cooking.
Um, uh if you're going to do it on the grill, right, then uh you can just undercook the inside a little bit more, and you could salt it way beforehand. It's probably not going to affect it too much. It'll be a little firmer, but it's not going to be a big deal. But once you cook the entire piece of meat up to, let's say, 55, uh, 55 and a half, it's not that it's overcooked if you salt it a long time before, but it's just a little bit firmer and it has a little bit less of that kind of um steak texture that rare, medium rare has, where it Stas, you know what I'm talking about, where it goes from that point of being kind of like where it still kind of moves independently. It feels kind of like, you know, like the way Cesare cooks it, it still feels like uh like m like me, and then it goes all of a sudden to being that cooked meat where it's like one piece now.
It doesn't kind of move independently. And it's that firming that happens when you salt uh far in advance on pieces of meat that that you want to have that uh texture on. And so those are the only real um things that I take into account. So that's you know, that's kind of the big uh that's kind of the big difference. So what happened is that person, uh, the one that they hated the most is they pre-salted the heck out, I think it's it's been two weeks since I read it, but they pre-salted the heck out of a pork loin, which is already kind of garbagey, uh garbage, a good piece of meat, but it's typically overcooked, and then they went ahead and overcooked it, and so they salted it, uh, they salted it all the way through.
Now it's already firm, and so it's gonna tend to be dry. I think I can't remember exactly how the pork loin was the one that that they had the difference in. Just think about it. This if you're gonna overcook it, then salting it in my mind is usually uh good the way to go because it's gonna hold on to more water. If you uh and it's going to get textured, if you need it to taste more rare and unadultered unadulterated, like pure steak, and you're going to cook it uh for hours and hours, low temp, then salt uh right before you're gonna sear it or something like this.
But that's basically what I do. Anyway. Anyone who disagrees with me, they're welcome to get on and disagree with me. Before you go, you want to take a call? Yeah, sure.
All right. Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, this is Chris from Green Zone in DC. How are you doing? Doing all right, what's going on?
Uh got a question. I have been using your milk washing technique for coffee-infused booze from liquid intelligence for a while, and it's always worked pretty well, except uh this last time, last night, I did it exactly as always, as written in the book, and the liquid basically didn't clarify. And so I'm trying to filter the booze out of the milk curves, and it's I've gone through like three coffee filters, and it's a giant pain in the butt. And I'm wondering what could have happened. Same recipe?
Yeah, exact same. Same milk? Yeah. Same type of milk. I mean, I'm using full, full like whole milk, but it might have been a different brand.
The only times I've had it really fail on me was I've used um ultra patch pasteurized milk. In fact, it was uh uh and it might there might be a range, right? So I'll give you an example. So like I I normally use regular pasteurized uh whole milk. Um but when I went to um Spain last time, they got me that wretched kind of boxed parmelot milk, which is like ultra highs, like sterilized milk.
And it did not work at all. So maybe there's some uh in between zone in the ultra pasteurizing zone where it doesn't um where it doesn't work, uh you know, where where it where it partially works, you know what I mean? This says pasteurized. It doesn't say ultra pasteurized, but it also says non-homogenized. So I don't know if that makes a difference.
That's interesting. I've never tried it with uh non-homogenized milk before. Um I'd be interested to try it with non-homogenized milk. But you say it did form a curd, but it just didn't curd very well. It's no, uh opposite actually happened.
The curds were much chunkier than usual. Huh. But it didn't fill. There was a lot of like normally when I do it, it forms a curd, and then I put it in the fridge overnight, and there's a clear layer of booze on top. The booze was cloudy.
Oh, so there was a curd layer, but the booze layer was still cloudy? Yeah. Huh. I wonder whether I wonder whether it's some sort of like uh extra excess fat in it from it not being homogenized. Could be.
Huh. Huh. I don't know. I'll have to test it with some uh non homogenized milk and see what's going on. But it could be that um it could be that the something about the fat not uh not coming.
Did it still function well, just didn't look right? Did it seem fattier? Um I've always filtered it through a coffee filter, and it usually I can you know filters out pretty quickly, but this time I've gone through three coffee filters and it's still not done. I hate coffee filters so much. I wish I could throw it into a centerfuge.
Um I funded the uh spinzall, so I hope it gets into production. Oh, me too, me too. We're working on we'll have some more announcements in the next couple of weeks, right, Stus? Yeah. Yeah, but you know, I I think it's I think it's looking I think it's looking better.
I think it's looking good. I think I think we're gonna make it happen. What do you think, Nastasia? I hope so. Yeah.
Uh but yeah, it makes milk. So when you do it, do you use whole milk, you said? I use whole milk, but I use whole like supermarket, like um mil you know, regular supermarket milk. Like so homogenized, pasteurized milk. I know it doesn't work with parmelot, and maybe it doesn't work with as well with um without centerfuge.
With non-homogenized, but it's something to check. And I like I say, I'd be interested in throwing it into a fuse to see whether it would spin out. Yeah, I mean I uh uh would imagine it would, but um all right. Well I guess next time I'll just try the uh regular homogenized stuff, bud. Cool.
Alrighty. Let me know. Hi man, thanks. All right, cool. Uh Nate Simon wrote in from Sacramento.
What? Do you need to get to your events or yeah, yeah, yeah. But let me let me just take a uh do a couple more. I'll like uh, you know, start late, end late. Uh I'm gonna show it one.
Well, oh yeah, yeah, I'll be no, I won't start. I won't end late, late, but I mean like you know, later than I need. All right. Okay. I'm a big fan of cooking vegetables.
This is from Simon, uh Nate Simon in Sacramento. Uh what do you think of Sacdown, Stasia? Fine. Fine. Uh sh she's like, I don't care about Sacramento.
Just speed it up. Uh that's the hand motion that you can't see that she's making. Um now you made me lose my place, see. I'm a big fan of cooking vegetables in the pressure cooker, which I then puree for soups. I do like the ability of the pressure cooker to caramelize the vegetables.
However, uh most recipes recommend adding a small amount of baking soda to facilitate the mired reaction. Remember though, you gotta keep straight the difference between caramelization, which is a sugar only thing in my yard, which is uh reducing sugar and and proteins, and we often say caramelized when we actually mean myard, uh, but like something like a carrot actually also has enough sugar in it that at higher temperatures anyway, actual caramelization can take place. And sugars, in fact, can caramelize on their own in uh a pressure cooker under the right circumstances, i.e., with baking soda. So in a pressure cooker with a high sugar item, there are act there is actually both myard reactions and caramelization reactions going on in a basic environment, i.e. alkaline environment, but just something to keep track of.
I find that even with small amounts of baking soda, less than 0.5%, I can still taste it. I call it the pretzel taste. Um I'm wondering if the baking soda is absolutely necessary. Could the vegetables just be cooked for a longer period of time and get the same degree of uh caramelization? Well, again, it's the question is is it caramelization or is it myard?
Is there any other alkalizing agent uh that could be used that doesn't give that funny side taste? Thanks and best wishes, Nate Simon. Um I don't know, I haven't run a lot of the tests. You could just try to cook it longer, but longer might mean like twice as long, uh, and see kind of what happens. Uh it's possible also that if you were to um allow more liquid to evaporate off, then the temperature would go kind of even higher, but you'd run into some problems with uh scorching uh at that point, unless you were doing the kind of trivet and jar uh technique.
Uh I've done some like ult ultra high temperature ones where I have uh pre-reduced, gotten some you know liquid out and then put them in uh in oil in it, but it's not really safe. I wouldn't really recommend doing it, and I can get like much higher temperatures that way. Um lastly, I want to make sure that you I mean you should just try it and see whether you like the result. Just do it for twice as long and see what happens. But I would also uh say I don't know whether the recipes that you're using uh have you neutralize the baking soda a little bit.
Unfortunately, baking soda doesn't neutralize to uh salt and um water the way that like hydrochloric acid and uh and lye would do. Uh but um it does it neutralizes to sodium acetate, which has a little bit of a vinegar uh like you uh like a so if you use acetic acid, then it will I think it will go to sodium acetate. Right? Yes, it'll go to sodium acetate, and then that'll have that's what they use for salt and vinegar potato chips. So if you want a little bit of a vinegar taste to it, you could try to neutralize it with a little bit of vinegar.
You could try to use a tiny pinch of food grade, tiny pinch of food grade uh sodium hydroxide, uh, and then but I wouldn't use HCl uh for it, so you're still gonna have uh an acetate uh ion in there when you neutralize it. But I would just be careful, as everyone knows lye in the kitchen can be dangerous if you don't label your core containers and you taste it like a jerk. Um lastly, uh Zach writes in about low temperature uh meats. My wife family my wife's family routinely commits war crime level overcooking of any meat. As a result, I'm increasingly volunteer to host or bring entrees to family events.
This has led to a secondary problem. They won't eat ever anything that is even pink inside, poultry, pork, and even beef. I can't bring myself to intentionally overcook, and I think they would actually like to eat things that are cooked much less if they could get past the psychological barrier. So is there a way with low-temp cooking to greatly reduce the amount of redness in a cooked piece of meat without actually cooking it more? I.e., could I enzymatically degrade the hemoglobin?
It's not hemoglobin, by the way, it's myoglobin. Or otherwise catalyze this degradation at a lower temperature. And then the second point you have is have you ever noticed that when toasting almonds, uh, that if you taste them well, they are still hot, their texture is odd and off putting and flavor even seems to be off. I think that's more of a texture issue. Uh but it could be a flavored thing because the volatiles coming out of, especially um if you leave the skins on.
But once they cool, they get that great crunchiness and uh texture. What's going on there? I think what's going on there is the protein uh it's like a protein gel, and when it's hot, it um with any residual moisture is just a little bit rubbery, and then when it cools down, it gets all nice and solid. Remember, roasting, you're actually flashing off uh almost all the water. So it's I think it's basically just that that protein gel.
Back to your meats. The problem with meats is that uh when you vacuum pack or cook something low temperature in a bag or or anything like this, um, your a lot of the uh myoglobin is in its deoxygenated state, deoxymyoglobin. Deoxymyoglobin is much more resistant to uh heat denaturation than uh than um regular um oxymyoglobin is. Uh and so what happens is is that you have a lot of deoxy left, it cooks, then when you uh get it out of the bag, it kind of blooms and gets red. Um in poultry, you have actual actual hemoglobin there coming out of the bones, especially in younger meat.
So with poultry, get rid of all the bones, uh trim out those areas, cook it faster. The uh it's been my experience that the fat faster rates of cooking, so in other words, thinner pieces of meat, faster rates of cooking are gonna get uh better coloration, well, more cooked-looking coloration for you. But uh allow it to bloom up in a full oxygen environment. Uh even allow it to go if you were to do things that make it look terrible beforehand, like form met myoglobin, i.e. put it in a micro oxygen environment so that it can oxidizes, pull it out, and then like expose it to large amounts of oxygen.
Oxygenated meat will turn brown very quickly. Uh, and so I'm actually experimenting with uh the low temperature book that I'm doing, uh, different ways to get around this problem since it is a problem. And so as I do experiments, I'll let you guys know. I'll give you more feedback on how to make meats look overcooked even when they're not cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network.
Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content and to hear about exclusive events, subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website, heritage radio network.org. Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at heritage underscore radio. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization driving conversations to make the world a better, fairer, more delicious place.
And we couldn't do it without support from listeners like you. Want to be a part of the food world's most innovative community? Rate the shows you like, tell your friends, and please join our community by becoming a member. Just click on the beating heart at the top right of our homepage. Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.